


Trade Secrets

by Tabata



Series: Leoverse [181]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 11:30:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18135170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tabata/pseuds/Tabata
Summary: Blaine and the boys go to see a live escapology show and Cody and Leo have a lot of questions on the subject. Luckily for them, there's a former escapologist among them.





	Trade Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> **WARNING:** This story is an **AU** from the original 'verse. What happens in here has little to none correlation with what happens in Leonard Karofsky-Hummel VS The world or Broken Heart Syndrome. The characters involved are (mostly) the same, but situations and relationships between them may be completely different.  
> In this particular verse Blaine and the boys (and girl) are a criminal team, very much like the one you can find in certain kind of movies or tv series (anyon said Leverage?), that's specialized in thefts. At some point, Federal Agent Sam Vanderbilt (yes, she finally has a surname) makes a deal with them: all their records will be erased if they start working with the government.  
> This story right here is the very beginning of it all.
> 
> written for: COW-T #9  
> prompt: escape

Cody watches as the huge water tank is filled with water. The escapologist is preparing himself a few feet from it. He's wearing nothing but a swimsuit and two sets of chains, one on his wrists and the other one on his ankles. The presenter already explained them what's going to happen. The escapologist will be plunged into the water tank, then the water tank will be covered with a tarp, and then the man will have two minutes to free himself and escape death.

Cody has seen this kind of act a lot of times on television, but it's different when it's happening right in front of your eyes, more so when you have an actual former escapologist sitting right next to you. Matt used to work in a circus, performing in a water tank number very similar to the one they are about to see, before Blaine found him. But since he almost died during his last performance, he wasn't exactly thrilled to come along. He accepted only because everybody was going and the alternative was staying home alone.

“Was your water tank that big too?” Cody asks him as he grabs a handful of popcorn from Leo's bucket.

“It depended on how scary the act had to be,” Matt answers. He's so tall that he seems out of scale compared to his seat. Blaine bought them all first row tickets to the show – so Matt could have legs room and Cody's line of sight was not going to be hindered by anybody – and yet Matt's legs manage to be in the way and he has to move them away every once in a while to let people pass without stumble. “If we wanted people to be scared just of me drownin', then yeah. If we wanted to scare 'em real good, then I had a tiny lil' tank and I would squeeze into it, so they would feel claustrophobic as well.”

“Was it scary for you?” Cody asks again.

Matt smiles. “Only that time I was drownin'.”

The presenter draws their attention to the stage once again and the audience falls silent. He repeats how the act will go down and how dangerous it is, then he steps away and leaves the floor to the escapologist. Drums start rolling softly as he climbs the little stepladder to the top of the tank. He sits on the edge of it for a little while, staring intently at the water. “He's relaxin' his body and slowin' down his heartbeat,” Matt explains to them in a whisper, “before holdin' his breath.”

Finally the drum roll stops and the escapologist plunges into the water tank, a black tarp slowly coming down to cover it a moment after. They only manage to see him struggling a little bit at the bottom of the tank before he disappears behind the curtain. “Is he really okay?” Cody asks, unable to tear his eyes away from the stage, even if he can't really see anything anymore. The escapologist's face looked really strained to him. It's really hard to watch this without the filter provided by the television that makes everything so distant.

“Don't worry, cupcake, it was all for show,” Matt puts an arm around his shoulders, taking his chances with Leo's raging and unmotivated possessiveness. Luckily for everybody's sanity, Leo too is really curious about this escapologist thing.

“As far as magic acts go, this is really frustrating,” Leo comments, turning his attention to them. “I mean, I want to see how he frees himself or at least try to understand how he does it. I don't get the point of the curtain.”

Matt laughs wholeheartedly, which makes a few people around them frown as this is a tense moment and they are all supposed to be dead worried for the man in the water tank. “First of all, Leo, this ain't a simple magic trick. Escapology is more like a discipline, a mix of meditation and contortionism, ya know? The audience doesn't really need to see how it happens, 'cause the thrill of it is the anxious wait, the remote possibility of death before their very eyes, that's what people really wanna see.”

“I don't want to see anybody die,” Cody protests.

“That's because you're a cupcake, cupcake.”

“Alright, but you know what's happening in there, don't you?” Leo insists. “Can't you give us an idea?”

Matt rolls his eyes. He should have known that a simple _the key point of it all is the mystery_ was not going to be enough for Leo. “I can't tell ya the trade secrets, you understand that, don'tcha?”

“Why not? You are not an escapologist anymore!” 

“Once an escapologist, always an escapologist,” Matt shrugs. “But one thing I can tell ya. Right now he's got the key in his mouth. The trick is to store enough air to have the time to get in position. To learn how to spit the key without losing air is important too.”

“How long has he been there?” Cody asks, nervously biting his nails.

“One minute and fifty seconds,” Adam answers, looking at his watch. “Time's almost up.”

“What if he doesn't come out in ten seconds?” Cody asks in horror.

“He won't. They tell the audience the longest he can stay in there is two minutes but you can actually allow at least twenty more seconds before starting to really panic.”

Matt is right because when the gong rings to warn the audience that the time's up, nothing really happens. The whole venue is holding their breath for the man inside the water tank – everybody except probably Matt, who sits comfortably in his seat and waits for the magic to happen for everybody else.

“It seems that he's having a problem,” the presenter says in a worried voice, looking behind the tarp.

Cody instantly turns to Matt, who still looks peaceful. “Don't worry, cupcake, he's still within the time frame.”

“Imagine if we are, like, yeah, Matt says he's still okay, and then they lift the tarp and the guy is floating like a dead fish” Leo chuckles, putting a handful of popcorn in his mouth.

“Leo! Don't say that!” Cody hits him on his shoulder, making him giggle like an idiot. “There's a human being in there and this act is very dangerous!”

“Yes, I get it, but it's like when you go to the circus. The trapeze artists have a very dangerous job, but you don't, like, see them falling down every other minute,” he defends himself. “They are professional, they don't die.”

“Can you please shut up?” Adam hisses at them as the drum roll starts again.

Despite everything, both Cody and Leo wait anxiously for the curtain to raise again and then they start clapping like madmen the moment they see the escapologist climbing down the stepladder, his chains left at the bottom of the water tank. Cody even stands up to better show the man his appreciation. They only calm down when people from the staff starts cleaning the stage.

“So, did you like it?” Matt asks, curious.

“It was great!” Cody claps his hands quickly a few more times as he always does when he's really excited. “But it was really nerve-wracking.”

“And frustrating,” Leo reiterates as he's literally unable to let go of any argument whatsoever. It's probably part of his illness too, but nobody tells him, lest he uses it to sort of justify what could very well being only his natural stubbornness. “I still wanna know how he did it.”

“If you don't shut up, I'm gonna throw you in a water tank,” Adam mutters. He hates people talking during any show. Movie night at the house is literally hell for him. “So maybe you'll learn on the job.”

“Oh my god, you're so boring!” Leo throws popcorn at him over Cody's head, which obviously sets Adam's off.

“I swear to God, Leo, next time you want to be left alone because you feel restless I'm gonna—“

“Alright, let's switch seats!” Blaine announces, forcing Adam to move one seat down, so he can sit next to Cody, physically putting himself between the two of them. When Adam starts hinting at Leo's ADHD, that's his cue to intervene because it can only get worse from that.

As the presenter introduces the next act, he sighs, thinking that sometimes he'd like to be an escapologist too, so when the madness of this kids unleashes itself upon him, he could snap his fingers and just free himself from this mess that, like that man's chains, he actually brought upon himself.  
Always the most sympathetic, Matt pats his shoulder. Knowing that's all the comfort he will get tonight, Blaine welcomes it gratefully.


End file.
